.\" @(#)man/man8/resizecons.8	1.0 Jan 17 12:04:28 MET 1995
.TH RESIZECONS 8 "17 Jan 1995" "kbd"
.SH NAME
resizecons \- change kernel idea of the console size
.SH SYNOPSIS
.BI "resizecons " COLSxROWS
.br
.BI "resizecons -lines " ROWS
.SH DESCRIPTION
The
.I resizecons
command tries to change the videomode of the console.
There are several aspects to this: (a) the kernel must know about it,
(b) the hardware must know about it, (c) user programs must know
about it, (d) the console font may have to be adapted.

(a) The kernel is told about the change using the ioctl VT_RESIZE.
This causes the kernel to reallocate console screen memory for
all virtual consoles, and might fail if there is not enough memory.
(In that case, try to disallocate some virtual consoles first.)
If this ioctl succeeds, but a later step fails (e.g., because
you do not have root permissions), you may be left with a very messy
screen.

The most difficult part of this is (b), since it requires detailed
knowledge of the video card hardware, and the setting of numerous
registers. Only changing the number of rows is slightly easier, and
.I resizecons
will try to do that itself, when given the
.I -lines
option. (Probably, root permission will be required.)
The command
.I "resizecons COLSxROWS"
will execute
.I "restoretextmode -r COLSxROWS"
(and hence requires that you have svgalib installed). Here COLSxROWS
is a file that was created earlier by
.I "restoretextmode -w COLSxROWS."
Again, either root permissions are required, or
.I restoretextmode
has to be suid root.

In order to deal with (c),
.I resizecons
does a `stty rows ROWS cols COLS' for each active console (in the
range tty0..tty15), and sends a SIGWINCH signal to
.I selection
if it finds the file /tmp/selection.pid.

Finally, (d) is dealt with by executing a
.I setfont
command. Most likely, the wrong font is loaded, and you may want to
do another
.I setfont
yourself afterwards.

.SH BUGS
.I resizecons
does not work on all hardware.  For example, it cannot be used on
platforms other than x86 and x86_64.  See the
.BR fbset (1)
program if you are looking for an alternative.

This command used to be called
.I resize,
but was renamed to avoid conflict with another command with the same name.

.SH "SEE ALSO"
.BR setfont (8),
.BR stty (1),
.BR selection (1),
.BR restoretextmode (8),
.BR deallocvt (8),
.BR fbset (1)

